The witches of Etsy

“It’s definitely the witch. The timing is too suspect.” The 35-year-old New Yorker professed her faith in witchcraft after describing herself as a reformed skeptic. Raised Episcopalian, she purchased a spell on Etsy for $25 and, shortly thereafter, got a tax refund and a boyfriend.   

Etsy shoppers are buying magical spells for everything from a career breakthrough and a “spirit cleanser” to pleasant weather on their wedding day and bringing back your ex. According to the The Wall Street Journal, spell-work and witchcraft has become a substantial cottage industry, with spells costing anywhere between $7 and $250 dollars. No refunds, of course.  

The trend is but another expression of revived interest in New Age spirituality and Wiccan paganism, especially among Generation Z. One report said over 60% of 14 to 29-year-olds read their horoscope on a daily basis. And 40% of those people claim the zodiac helps them make decisions. In 2017, astrology was a $2 billion industry. By 2021 that number rose to $12 billion. Projections estimate it will grow to $22 billion by 2031. 

Take a stroll through Half-Price Books and you’ll find multiple display tables with books on tarot cards, crystals, astrology, and spells. And that’s just one brick and mortar outlet. Social media is a buffet of occultism. The hashtag, #Witchcraft has nine million results, with #WitchesOfInstagram yielding more than 10 million results, teaching everything from moon rituals to herbal potions. On TikTok, some eight million posts appear under the tag, #WitchTok.  Gen Z celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kaitlin Jenner share their horoscopes while accounts like “Zodiac Boyfriend” practice astrology for their followers.   

So pronounced is the uptick in spiritualism among young adults that major outlets are taking notice. Before the Wall Street Journal’s story, the New York Times reported astrology is having a “pop culture renaissance.” GlamourUK observed “Witchcraft could be to Gen Z what mindfulness is to millennials.”

The popularity of Etsy Witches and the renewed interest in paganism may be just a fleeting fad. Or it might be a manifestation (no pun intended) of something deeper. With more than one-third of Gen Z identifying as religiously unaffiliated “nones,” the concept of organized religion is held in suspicion. Institutions and leaders are deemed worthy of distrust and their dogmatism as a tactic to preserve social preeminence and political power.

But on this side of our secular age, humanity’s impulse to worship doesn’t go away. The spiritual self can be suppressed, but the drive to connect with a larger reality—to situate oneself within a broader narrative—persists. Try as they might, Gen Z can’t eradicate the inward pull towards religious practice. They can only redirect it.  

And how they redirect it reflects the cultural confluence of both spiritual and sociological factors. Part of an Etsy Witch’s appeal is the hope of having control. New Age and Wiccan practices claim followers have power to change their lives and “shape their world” through rituals, and “magical energy.” It’s far from coincidental that a generation drawn to casting spells, reading horoscopes, and carrying crystals is also the most anxious and depressed generation in U.S. history.  

Combine widespread mental health maladies, post-Christian secularism, and a “live your truth” mindset, and a resurgence of the occult makes sense. The dominant influence of expressive individualism means questions of meaning and direction are entirely up to you. Your feelings are your ultimate source of truth. One young woman described how her generation’s insecurity about the future inclines them to a spirituality where “you get to pick what resonates with you and what doesn’t.” Practitioners feel a sense of agency, or at least a therapeutic connection to a benevolent life force. 

A spiritualism that presents the self as the object around which the universe revolves, for whom the forces of nature are manipulated, and by whom human will is changed, seems fine-tuned to fit the current cultural atmosphere.  

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9): the impulse toward idolatry (Isaiah 44:9-20), the deception that “you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5), pursuing the illusion of control (Zechariah 10:2), worshipping creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:21-23), and even dabbling in the demonic (Deuteronomy 18:9-12).  

The overt increase in occultism reinforces that we don’t contend with flesh and blood, but with the principalities, powers, and rulers of spiritual darkness (Ephesians 6:12). And spiritual darkness is precisely what a generation of horoscope-reading, crystal-carrying, Etsy witch-consulting, “spiritual but not religious” post-Christian Americans are held captive to.  

However technologically advanced or socially evolved we may declare ourselves to be, we are in spiritual bondage apart from the Truth that sets us free (John 8:32).